America has a massive debt problem, on that most Americans can agree. How it we ended-up here, however, is a matter of interminable debate between our two major political parties. The process of running up a $20 trillion federal deficit may seem complex and complicated, but in reality it is no more complicated than a family running-up enormous balances on their credit cards.

The same spending principles are at play, and many of the same mistakes are made. The federal government, like most households, finances its spending in one of two ways: income coming in (in the form of taxes for government, salaries and wages for households) or through the use of debt (Treasury securities for the government, credit cards, student loans, car loans, etc. for households). The responsible government or household strives to make ends meet, while striving to stay away from the excessive use of debt instruments. Deficits are created when needs arise that outstrip income, and entrenched debt is created when debt is treated like income in perpetuity.

In spite of the similarities in principle of private households and the federal government, there are several major financial differences in their accumulation of debt. The biggest of these differences is the ability of the Federal Reserve to create the money needed to pay-back the government’s debt obligations. Whereas households actually have to earn the cash they need to repay their obligations, government fires-up the printing presses, figuratively speaking. This means that, ultimately, we all pay for fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.

Here is how the debt cycle in D.C. actually works: Congress blows billions of dollars more every year than the federal government takes in through tax revenue, the Treasury Department issues bonds to securitize the debt (the bond is the credit card of the government), then the Treasury sells these bonds to investors to raise the capital needed to pay for profligate spending by the government.
The question then becomes who buys the bonds? Unfortunately, the answer is that the Federal Reserve has bought $ billions through bond-buying programs.

From stimulus packages, to big government bailouts, the Federal Reserve has been one of the largest purchasers of bonds issued by the Treasury. This is a tell-tale sign that investors in this country, as well as abroad, have lost some of their appetite to continue bailing out an out-of-control government in Washington. This ought to serve as a warning sign to Washington.

There have been other governments in modern history that have tried this same sort of socialistic monetary scheme, with predictably disastrous results. Germany’s Weimar Republic gave it a whirl, destroyed their economy, and ended up with Adolf Hitler in the aftermath. The Greeks gave it a go, only to find themselves going down the road to economic oblivion. These are just two examples of what not to do that policymakers in Washington seem unwilling to heed. Hyperinflation is the inherent result of printing money from thin air, and this is a de facto tax on the American people.

If the government prints money to pay its own bills, doesn’t that destroy the value of money already in circulation? The answer is yes, and we call that process monetary debasement inflation. This means that the dollars in each of our pockets are becoming more and more worthless as the printing presses keep printing. This makes everything from corn flakes to clothes more expensive for American consumers, and the value of our savings and retirement accounts is undermined.

The circle of socialism, wherein an over-promising, big spending federal government attempts to cover for its financial mismanagement through the printing of cash, actually has the same effect as a tax hike. That result is less purchasing power for American families, which translates into hampered economic demand and sluggish economic growth. This adversely affects the standard of living of all Americans.

As President Trump considers his choice to chair the Federal Reserve next year, I hope he selects a candidate who wants to limit the power and reach of the central bank. Congress, likewise, needs to expand its oversight of the Fed including, but not limited to, annual audits of the bank’s balance sheet and income statements. If the unaccountable power of the Fed is not reigned-in the prediction of Thomas Jefferson that “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation… their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered” will be fulfilled in our time.

On August 15, 2012, I was on my way into downtown D.C. to record my daily radio program at the Family Research Council (FRC) when I got a call not to come. I was in D.C. for a conference and had been using the studios at FRC to broadcast my show back in SC, until Floyd Lee Corkins II walked-in shot a security guard that morning. Corkins admitted that his design was to kill as many people as possible, and to place Chic-Fil-A sandwiches on their bodies because of the organization’s stance in favor of natural marriage. Corkins was motivated to do so by FRC’s being included on a list of hate organizations released by the uber-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Fast forward to October, 2017, and see that the SPLC has learned nothing from the near mass-murder their antics inspired in 2012. SPLC has renewed their labeling of the FRC as a hate group, because of their pro-life and pro-family stances, and have openly called for their public denunciation. I shudder to think how this renewed dog whistle to radical leftists might inspire the next Corkins to kill pro-family conservatives. The FRC’s annual “Values Voters Summit” took place this weekend in Washington, and President Trump gave the keynote address on Friday evening.

The President’s participation in the event has sent the Left into hysterics. The headline at Newsweek says it all “Donald Trump to Speak at Hate Group’s Annual Event, a First For A President.” To read that headline, one would be forgiven for thinking that the President was planning to speak to a neo-Nazi convention, not a pro-family rally. That the Left now considers social conservatives bigots, and brands supporters of traditional marriage haters, is alarming. Is it any wonder that Democrats are losing up-and-down the ballot in spite of the Republican Party’s internal strife?

The only hate group involved in this blow-up is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which routinely attacks Christians, conservative Jewish organizations, anti-terrorist organizations, and pro-family groups. According to the SPLC’s own tax returns, the organization possesses enormous wealth, has offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, and holds ownership stakes in several foreign corporations. In short, the SPLC is a slush-fund for liberal billionaires who want to trash family values conservatives.

Speaking to the Family Research Council doesn’t constitute a speech to a hate group. Giving a speech to the SPLC may, however, count.

American politics have descended into such a dumpster fire of partisan acrimony that we have no remaining semblance of civil discourse in our country. From rising racial tension, which has now extended even to disrespect for the Flag and Anthem at football games, to legislative stagnation in Washington, it seems increasingly like we share a continent but not a country. This needs to change, this must change, if we are going to extend American prosperity into a second century of American Leadership. Many of the debates we are having have merit, but are addressed in the wrong way by all sides.

Take, for example, the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between law enforcement agencies and the communities that they serve. There should not be two absolute extremes in these debates; it should not be portrayed that the police are either pure evil or perfectly pure. I know from first hand experience that neither is the case, and that is a good place to begin a real discussion. Three years ago tomorrow, on the day after Columbus Day 2014, I was arrested and put behind bars. The charge was child abuse, and the warrant was signed. My ex wife, with whom I had been fighting for 3 years over the custody of our 3 year old son (she left our marriage immediately after giving birth), was my accuser. She needed to leave the state to be with her new husband, and she wanted me out of the parental picture. She found a sympathetic female detective who helped her hurt me, and she trumped-up charges without any evidence. My only apparent crime was desiring to be a dad who is in the mix.

After four nights in the county jail, which resulted in much publicity because I am a public figure, and four months without seeing my own son, all charges against me were dropped without even so much as a preliminary hearing. I won primary custody of my son, and my ex wife was reprimanded for her lies. Through this ordeal, however, I learned more about America’s criminal justice system than I ever wanted to know. Some things were very comforting, many were very disturbing, and I never thought any of it could happen to me.

My general conclusion after my time in the belly of the beast is that, in spite of its flaws, America still has the most just criminal justice system in the world, but that it is still terribly flawed. It is driven too much by money, plea deals, and connections, and this inherently favors wealthier members of our society while simultaneously being more burdensome on less affluent folks. This results, oftentimes, in many people of lower incomes and of color being convicted of criminal offenses that more affluent people may escape. This is different than saying that the system is inherently racist or oppressive; it is neither. Unintentional bias is not the same as intentional, systemic oppression.

As a conservative, it is my desire that we have honest conversations about the police, the criminal justice system, and how to ensure that both treat everyone equitably. For starters, we must remember that the police and prosecutors are agents of the government and, therefore, should be respected but not immune to public scrutiny. We most also reduce the number of offenses that lead to incarceration, lest we trap people in lifestyles of recidivism and repeat offense. Among other things, this means that we should establish drug courts like Governor Rick Perry did down in Texas, to help people convicted of petty drug offenses rehabilitate before throwing them in prison and making truly hardened criminals of them at early ages.

With regard to the police, we should establish programs like my home County of Spartanburg, South Carolina, that build bridges of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Our Clerk of Court, Hope Blackley, established a Criminal Justice Academy to educate young people, particularly at-risk youth, about the criminal justice system, and to help law enforcement officials better understand communities that have an inherent suspicion of the police. We should establish programs to ensure that law enforcement officers wear body cameras in every jurisdiction, and that respect for the police is established in every corner of our country. By mutually seeking to understand all sides, we can build a nation that is more just and generous.

Finally, discussions like I have outlined here ought to replace disrespectful and disruptive riots in cities, on college campuses, and should replace NFL players taking a knee in disrespect of our National Anthem and Flag. We are a good and noble country, and we are always about the business of building a “more perfect union.” That work of building a more perfect union begins with each of us respectfully engaging in civic discourse with respect for one another and the very nation we are seeking to improve.

For weeks now we have watched as American liberals have tried to rationalize and defend NFL players and teams who have disrespected our Flag and Anthem. Even on foreign soil, NFL players with the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars took a knee during the “Star Spangled Banner,” but stood for “God Save the Queen,” in London. The Left told us that this was all to protest police brutality toward minority communities, and because the “Star Spangled Banner” references slavery (even though it’s referring to conscripted British troops during the War of 1812).

Americans across the spectrum have been outraged by the NFL’s disrespect to our country and our men and women in uniform. We have been lectured by liberal cultural elites, however, who tell us that our outrage suggests bigotry, even though it is motivated by patriotism not prejudice. We have been told that it is the right of all NFL players to protest, and that is true, but that doesn’t mean we have to buy NFL Sunday Ticket on Direct TV or buy overpriced jerseys and swag. Now, the very same “warriors for the First Amendment,” who vigorously defended the right of NFL players to take a knee are outraged that the Vice President of the United States left the Colts game today.

At the opening of the Indianapolis Colts game against the San Francisco 49ers in Indianapolis, players took a knee during during the National Anthem at the opening of the game. That incensed, rightly so, Vice President Mike Pence who promptly got-up and walked out. Pence tweeted after leaving that ” I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.” That’s exactly what most Americans would expect the nation’s Vice President to do in the face of blatant disrespect to the Country.

Now, the very same defenders of the NFL knee-taking are trashing the Veep for standing-up for America. San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid said of Pence’s departure that “this is what systemic oppression looks like. A man with power comes to the game, tweets a couple things out and leaves the game, with an attempt to thwart our efforts.” What an unbelievably terrible thing to say about a man as honorable as Mike Pence. The liberal elites may now trash the Vice President for taking a stand, but most Americans are cheering Pence with chants of USA, USA!!

Money to a political party is much like warm blood to a mammal; it keeps it alive and functioning, and it cannot survive without it. As such, both Republicans and Democrats have political hot buttons that they push to rev-up their base and increase contributions. For Republicans, supporting the 2nd Amendment and professing pro-life principles are the ticket to energizing their base and keeping contributions coming. For Democrats, promoting abortion, the LGBT agenda, and gun grabbing against law-abiding gun owners keep their coalition’s wallets open and activism up. The one thing both parties have in common, however, is that keeping these issues alive is more important than solving them.

This truth was on full display this week when the NRA came-out in favor of a regulatory change regarding bump stocks. Bump stocks are an accessory often used to make semi-automatic weapons, which are legally obtainable, operate like automatic weapons that are not legally purchasable under the National Firearms Act signed by President Ronald Reagan. The Las Vegas gunman used bump stocks on several semi-automatic weapons to expedite his rapidity of fire. As such, before liberals could even make a proposal, the NRA and gun rights activists came-out in support of banning bump stock usage by amending regulations issued by ATF under the National Firearms Act.

The day that the NRA came-out favoring the ban of bump stocks by the ATF, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer gave the proposal a tepid reception. Their reaction is proof of their politicization of the carnage on the Vegas Strip. The only statutory or regulatory change that would have made any difference, even if minor, in Las Vegas is the ban of bump stocks. The fact that Dems don’t want to support the NRA proposal proves that it’s all politics for them at this point. They have a more wide-sweeping agenda; they want to end the 2nd Amendment as we know it and significantly curtail access to firearms by law-abiding American citizens.

Their sweeping agenda was exposed in the tweets of their own 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton. Clinton tweeted on Monday that “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.” Living up to Rahm Emmanuel’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste,” Hillary is pushing the Democrats’ agenda of gun confiscation by trashing the NRA over silencers. The reality in Vegas is that the gunshots ringing out did not cause people to run, people dying did. The concert was set to conclude with fireworks, and most of the people on stage and in the audience believed that the pyrotechnics had malfunctioned, not that they were under attack.

Democrats will not support the NRA proposal on bump stocks. They will not because it will cast the NRA in a good light, and that is not to Democrats’ political advantage. It doesn’t matter that the proposal makes sense, or is good for the country, it doesn’t fit into their anti-gun agenda and it wasn’t their idea. We are at a sad impasse in American politics, wherein what is good for America doesn’t matter as much to politicians as what is good for their respective political parties.

On July 1, 2015, Kathryn “Kate” Steinle was shot and killed by Juan Francisco López-Sánchez on Pier 14 in San Francisco, California. Shortly after Steinle was shot, it became clear that López-Sánchez was a criminal illegal immigrant who had been deported from the United States five times, and was on probation in Texas at the time of Steinle’s murder due to one of his seven felony convictions. Americans were rightly outraged over the senseless death of a 32 year old woman taking a walk with her father, and rightly blamed San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy for contributing to Kate Steinle’s slaying. The result was that many Republicans in Congress supported the introduction of “Kate’s Law,” which would increase penalties for deported illegal immigrants who try to return to the United States.

In spite of the fact that “Kate’s Law” passed the U.S. House of Representatives 257-157, with 24 Democrats voting in favor, Democratic leaders have denounced the bill as GOP grandstanding. Democratic claims that Republicans are scapegoating immigrants for crimes like Kate Steinle’s murder is amazingly hypocritical given what has happened this week after the carnage in Las Vegas. Democrats across the spectrum have lined-up to take on private gun ownership in a shameless politicization of a national tragedy. Where Republicans did not blame immigrants, or even illegal immigrants, in general, but focused on illegal immigrants who committed other crimes, Democrats have cast all private gun ownership as irresponsible and evil. In other words, they are scapegoating gun owners in the very way they accused Republicans of scapegoating all illegal immigrants as criminal felons over the evil actions of a few.

Beyond just legislative targeting of law-abiding gun owners, liberals are blaming Sunday’s tragedy on “Trumpism.” For example, Drexel University Associate Professor George Ciccariello-Maher tweeted shortly after the shooting on Sunday night that “White people and men are told that they are entitled to everything. This is what happens when they don’t get what they want.” This, according to the white male professor, is the “narrative of white victimization…[that] is the spinal column of Trumpism, and most extreme form is the white genocide myth.” Wow. This leftist college professor is actually arguing that Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and wounded 500 more simply because he was an angry white guy.

Knee-jerk reactions and political hysterics won’t help anyone recover from what happened Sunday evening. Politicians of both parties should back-off and allow the investigation to run its course before assigning blame to the NRA, gun manufacturers, or racism. As it stands right now, the killer was in illegal possession of many of the weapons he used to carry out the attack, did not apparently target any specific race while indiscriminately killing innocent Americans on the Vegas strip, and does not appear to have a criminal history of domestic violence or extremism.

After a motive is determined, accomplices apprehended, and the victims honored, we can have a national conversation about how to prevent this from ever happening again. The solution, however, must not be to disarm innocent people and shred the Second Amendment in the process. Liberals, nevertheless, will almost certainly take Rahm Emmanuel’s advice and not “let a good Crisis go to waste” when it comes to the gun control agenda.

I often long for the days that, while in political exile, conservatives would show-up 10,000 strong in cities across the country to stand-up for the Constitution and free enterprise. So overreaching was Obamacare and trillion dollar stimulus packages that Americans across the spectrum, including millions who normally eschew political activism, took to the alleys and airways to have their voices heard. The result, at the time, was a wave election that witnessed the U.S. House of Representatives return to Republican control after four long years of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Tea Party was successful because it was a movement inside a movement, and it moved the Republican Party toward stronger freedom principles. By electing conservatives from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz and Tim Scott, the Tea Party propelled Republicans to the majority, while putting more principled leaders into office. Since the heyday of the Tea Party, however, we have witnessed the Republican Party moving back toward mushy moderation on Capitol Hill. Lack of action on the part of Party leaders in Congress was the primary catalyst for the election of Donald J. Trump last November. Now, the Republican Party is at all-out war with itself as disillusioned conservative activists are now openly advocating for a third party, which will further divide the Republican base.

Democrats are experiencing internal struggles as well, and the internecine battle for the soul of the Democratic Party may be even more pronounced. Mainline Democrats are vying with socialists for control of the their party, and the results will affect the nation for decades to come. An emerging force within Democratic politics is the Democratic Socialists of America, which is setting itself up to be the “Tea Party” for liberals. The DSA recognizes, however, that their primary objective is to take-over the Democratic Party, not to start a third party all their own. As much as Democratic socialism scares me to death, they have a savvy political strategy that may well work if not countered.

We conservatives must not allow democrats and socialists to align in an unholy alliance that is setting itself up against free-enterprise, limited government, and religious liberty. As Michael Kazin, editor of the Leftist-Socialist magazine Dissent recently wrote, “The only viable electoral strategy is to work with the Democratic Party, there is no viable third party.” Kazin is basically saying that socialists are engineering a plan to take-over the Democrat Party and use it to make socialist ideology mainstream in America for the first time in a century.

I was a believer in conservative Tea Party principles before the Tea Party even existed. We still need a movement within the Republican Party to move us back toward limited government, free enterprise, and constitutional convictions. This movement must work within the GOP, however, or we will run the risk of undermining our own effectiveness. If democrats and socialists unite, while Tea Party conservatives and Republicans part ways, the conservative philosophy that we share will be imperiled. Republican leadership should start embracing the conservative resurgence within its ranks, not alienate a key constituency and ally in the battle against secular-socialism. The very future of the conservative movement and, by extension, American freedom, hangs in the balance.

The polls are in, and Americans overwhelming agree that the NFL’s symbolic attack on America’s anthem is unacceptable. A survey conducted this week by Remington Research Group finds that 64% of Americans believe that NFL players should stand and be respectful during the “Star Spangled Banner” at the start of football games. The only question that I would ask is what does the other 36% believe? Since when did standing for the national anthem and the American Flag become an issue of racial insensitivity? America is, in spite of its imperfections, the most racially inclusive nation on Earth and is always in the process of becoming “a more perfect union.” For American football players to treat this good and noble nation as a hotbed of racism and white supremacy is wrong and necessarily self-defeating.

Some of the NFL players who are taking a knee during the national anthem are, according to their claims, protesting the racism embedded in the anthem itself. Francis Scott Key wrote the four stanza poem “The Star Spangled Banner” while on a British prison ship in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. Fort McHenry was under assault from the British Royal Navy, and Key kept watching the flag pole to see if the Stars and Stripes fell during the assault. As dawn broke the morning after fierce fighting, Key was ecstatic to see that the American Flag still waived over the Fort, indicating that the British had not completely taken Baltimore. Standing on the deck of the British ship, he began to write words to the poem, which he would later complete on shore, memorializing what he saw during the British bombardment of Baltimore Harbor.

It is the third stanza of “The Star Spangled Banner” that has been used by some to justify disrespect for the national anthem. Key wrote that:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The reference to “hireling and slave” in the fifth line of the third stanza has been cited as proof that the anthem itself is racist, and that honoring it honors racism, police brutality, and white supremacy. Such claims are patently absurd, and lack both context and common sense. Many historians agree that Key’s reference to “hireling and slave” is a reference not to the abhorrent practice of holding humans as chattel property by plantation owners, but to the British military’s practice of forcibly conscripting troops to serve in its ranks. This interpretation makes sense, since the poem is about the battle for Fort McHenry, not plantations in Virginia. Honoring the anthem is not honoring racism or white supremacy; it is honoring a nation that has constantly reapplied its founding principles to expand the rights and protections of our Constitution to all citizens of the Great Republic. It was a poem written for a nation fighting for its right to exist, not for a nation seeking to subject its own citizens.

NFL players, like all Americans, have a right to express their beliefs regardless of public opinion. They do not have the right, however, to be immune from public outrage over their actions. The height of this absurdity was well illustrated this past Sunday during an NFL game in London, wherein players for the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars knelt during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” yet remained standing during Britain’s “God Save the Queen.” Such an act of disrespect is not only unacceptable on foreign soil, but it is also historically illiterate. The British Empire was responsible for the promulgation of the slave trade in America and the Caribbean, as well as the oppressor of the American colonies during the American Revolution. Such a stunt proves the point that this entire episode is more about public attention than truly protesting a point of policy.

The American Flag stands for all Americans, and the “Star Spangled Banner” is the Anthem of all Americans, regardless of their race, color, or the sound of their name. We are the most free and prosperous nation on the planet, and we should all be pulling together to create a “more perfect union,” not dividing our nation by disrespecting its symbols. Addressing issues of racial tension and inequality is in keeping with the spirit of creating a “more perfect union,” but this needs to be done without trashing the very symbols of the American Republic.

At the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush and his impersonator, Steve Bridges, made a joke that was only sort of a joke when they said “it’s time for us to come together, Republican, and Democrat, and John McCain.” The joke, like all jokes, was funny because it was a play on the truth. McCain is a wild card who seems to be unencumbered by the baggage of principles. McCain campaigned aggressively last year in Arizona against Obamacare and promised to lead the fight to repeal it if reelected. Instead, he has led the faction of the Republican Party that is seemingly committed to saving socialized medicine in America.

The Democrats have a plan for when Obamacare inevitably fails; it was written by Bernie Sanders. Liberals will never accept that their signature healthcare takeover is a failure. Instead, they will say that it did not go far enough and that Republicans prevented it from working properly. In a flurry of negative ads, Democrats will attack Republicans as “getting people killed” by opposing Medicaid for all, and they will seek to advance the single-payer system of which they have always dreamed. The first order of business for all conservatives must be to preclude Bernie Sanders’s dream of single-payer healthcare, which would destroy the standard of care we have come to expect in America.

The Graham-Cassidy bill that is currently being debated represents the single best opportunity this year to eliminate the mandates of Obamacare and ensure that Bernie Sanders never gets his way. The vast majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill have signaled support for the measure, recognizing that it is a good start from which we can further free the healthcare system from the stranglehold of big government. That Graham-Cassidy is not a perfect bill is a given, but it does gut Obamacare’s bail-out of insurance companies, eliminates the individual and corporate mandates to buy government-approved health insurance, and block-grants funding back to the states saving billions of dollars. It is a great start, and it will likely prevent single-payer healthcare in our lifetime.

For all of these reasons, Senator John McCain’s and Senator Rand Paul’s opposition is unforgivable. McCain has just decided to fully embrace socialized medicine and enshrine Obamacare, in spite of his campaign promises, and Rand Paul has elected to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If Senator McConnell can’t coerce at least 50 Republicans in his 52 member caucus to support Graham-Cassidy, which would allow Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie, then I am concerned we may never repeal Obamacare. Republican voters will walk if repeal is not realized, and a potential Democratic congress come next November would protect Obamacare and move toward single-payer as their long term “fix.”

Republicans must keep their campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, and John McCain and Rand Paul are standing in the way. It is time to call both of them out for allowing Obamacare to continue to collapse under the weight of its own implausibility, and to condemn John McCain as the sell-out to the conservative movement that he has always been.

As a man who just got engaged to be married for the second time, this time I am certain to the right woman, I believe that I am uniquely qualified to write about the importance of the family to a free society. I have known what it is to be married before having children, only to then go through a divorce and custody battle worse than most people would ever imagine, and to emerge as a primary custody single father. Between the loss of my first marriage, not by my choice, and my engagement this past week, over five years have passed. I can say with absolute certainty that raising children outside of marriage and family is very, very difficult.

As a result of my personal experience I do not understand the outrage unleashed at two public university law professors, who were condemned as racists, sexists, and homophobes, simply for endorsing personal responsibility and morality. Several weeks ago a good friend of mine from California, who is a steadfast conservative in a crazy state, sent me the link to an op-ed written by University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax and University of San Diego law professor Larry Alexander in the PhiladelphiaInquirer. The article titled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture,” is a powerful piece that outlines how America’s Judeo-Christian Culture has come under assault from a moral relativism that is destroying our families, our economy, and our social fabric. Nothing that these two professors said is racist, sexist, or homophobic, but that has not prevented a liberal bloodletting over the professors’ position.

The essence of the article published in the Inquirer is summed-up in the writers’ own words. The core idea of the piece is that people should

“Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Nothing about these ideas is racist or bigoted; they are good principles for all people, at all times.

America’s independent spirit thrives when families are strong. It was Aristotle, hardly a right-wing evangelical, who taught that the nucleic family consisting of a mother, father, and children is well-ordered society in its fundamental form. Limited government and personal liberty are dependent upon the commitment of individuals to a common moral code. Throughout American history, this code has consisted of Judeo-Christian concepts at the heart of Western Civilization. Secular-Progressives want to destroy the concept of marital fidelity and nucleic families for one fundamental reason: they represent the greatest bulwark of resistance against their statist ideology.

I had my son inside of marriage, and I have largely raised him as a single father. I can say that, unequivocally, it is easier to raise children with a spouse. It is easier to make and save money, build an estate, and teach and raise a child with solid life principles inside of marriage. This is not a knock against single moms and dads who are doing the best they can for their children; it is simply a statement about what is best for society and the individuals who make it up. Just because there are exceptions to the rule of nucleic families being preferable, they do not change the fact that most fundamental precepts of personal success, personal responsibility, and civic education are obtained inside the family.

Americans of all races and walks of life should embrace and encourage family development in our country. Doing so would do far more to win the war on poverty than all the programs Washington can create.